Replication
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Goretober Day 25; Broken. Regina finds dolls of everyone she hates and begins breaking them apart.


She finds them in her closet and she loathes them. Several little dolls of the people Regina hates the most. They are just there, she supposes in the same way Henry had acquired the storybook.

They stare up at her with cute, little, glass bead eyes and she wants to tear them apart. She can't exactly toruture the real versions of them, not hear in Storybrooke. She isn't that brutishly savage anyhow.

The dolls though, she wouldn't mind picking them apart, living out some of her sicker fantasies through them. It isn't a great coping mechanism but it will have to do. It is better than many of the alternatives.

Whale is first, mostly because she sees him first. Perhaps it is weird and borderline insane and she feels awkward for doing it, but she finds herself picking out one of Henry's larger toy cars. She gives it and the Whale doll within a good push, sending it careening over the railing and onto the floor. The doll's head comes off but Henry's car is mostly in tact.

She picks up the miniature David next. His little plastic hand puts up some resistance as she tries to snap it, she can't seem to break it off entirely, so she settles for simply bending it back as far as she possibly can. She pushes the left hand back just as far. But she tries to go beyond that. She twists the plastic and twists at it until the hand is barely hanging off. Satisfied with her work, she shoves doll David aside, she has already paid him too much attention.

She brushes her hand over the Granny doll and over the Ruby doll, she doesn't hate them quite as much as the others, not enough to bother defacing their dolls. Instead she finds the one of Gold. She takes the toy cane that his teeny plastic hands is wrapped around and she drives it into his middle. She first has to carve a little hole with a knife, the cane slips in with ease. She now has an impaled imp doll. She puts him aside.

She smirks as she picks up the Mary doll. This she snaps the back of. She gives it no thought as she bends the doll practically in half with a snarl. She yanks at the doll's arms and legs. She scratches its face until it is unrecognizable and she tosses it in the trash.

Faintly she thinks of how irrational it is that she is getting so heated over toys.

Regina picks up the Emma doll regardless. Thinking of how she'd stolen Graham and sawed a branch off of her apple tree, of how she continues to try to steal Henry and of how she can very well break the curse, Regina bashes the Emma doll's against the counter top. She pounds until it's plastic head caves in.

**.oOo.**

She wakes to an urgent phone call.

A report of an accident.

A bad and grizzly one.

Emma and her sheriff's car are already on the scene alongside a small crowd of spectators. Regina pushes her way through it. She could make out a car lying crushed on the beach, at the base of a small cliffside. It had ripped through the guardrails.

"How did this happen?"

"Drunk driving." Emma replies. "Everyone said that they saw Whale stumble his way out of the bar. He couldn't even walk straight, but he decided to drive…"

Regina stops listening as a chill runs down her back. A coincidence, she tells herself. Just a morbid coincidence. There is no magic in Storybrooke, Whale had done this to himself. A drunk fool behind the wheel, no different from the reset of them…

But she can't explain away David's mishap the following morning. That he had gone tripped over the curb on his way to his car and that the way he had fallen onto himself had snapped his right hand back. That a street cleaner, of all things, happened to be driving by and ended up twisting his hand nearly off.

He is in the hospital now.

A hospital that is out its main doctor…

They say that he will probably recover.

Regina tries to think of who is next. A wave of dread washes over her. She pulls on a jacket and hastily makes her way over to Gold's pawn shop. She stops outside the door, wondering just what the hell she is going to say.

"Are you just going to stand there, dearie? Or can I pass?" He steps out of the shop.

"You…" She starts. "You have to be careful."

"Oh do I?"

Regina nods.

"I'm not drunk like the doctor and I'm not an idiot like Mr. Nolan." Gold speaks. "I will be fine."

"That doesn't mean that you should let your guard down." Regina grumbles.

"Out of my way, dearie." He motions with his cane and Regina's heart seizes.

"Put that thing down!" She frowns. "Before you hurt someone with it."

Mr. Gold rolls his eyes. "If I wanted to beat you with my cane, I would have done it already." He mutters. "Now if you'll excuse me…"

"Listen to me…"

"Move out of my way and leave me be." He smirks, "please."

Regina closes her eyes and inhales in annoyance as her body freezes up. She watches the man walk by, the streetlight glints off of his cane. He gives it a few lazy twirls and she wonders which one will be the last. But he makes it to his car.

She doesn't find out until the next morning that there has been another freak accident. This one involving the hands of the town clock tower falling after having rusted loose. She doesn't need Emma's report to know that the victim has been impaled through the stomach. She doesn't need Emma's report to know who had been impaled.

Her face is pale as she pretends to work through a stack of paper. For as much as she hates Mary, she doesn't want to see another gruesome headline. Yet one lands on her desk anyhow. Sydney slaps it down with pride, declaring that he has got a real story this time.

A wolf attack; the animal had dragged Mary away from her outing with David. David having no functioning hands to work with could only watch as the woman's limbs were shaken loose and her face was scratched up. Could only watch as she tried to escape the creatures grasp only to fall into a small sinkhole and put a crack in her spine.

Worser still, that she is alive and paralyzed.

Regina runs a hand through her hairline. She has done this. It is her fault. Those dolls.

Emma.

In this moment she has no hatred for the woman. Just concern. Concern at what she is going to be responsible for. Regina winces. Winces and wonders...she wonders if she can stop this. She had went about it in the wrong way with Gold.

She gets to her feet and hastily runs home where she shuffles through her draws until she finds the Emma doll with its concave face. She tries her best to pop the doll's head back to its rightful shape. With horror, she realizes that she is only making it worse. She has successfully rubs the paint off of the doll's eyes. She feels sick. God, if she had known before she'd smashed its plastic face in.

If only she knew…

If only…

She has only one idea left. One idea that she isn't sure can be accomplished on time. At the very least, she has to try. Doll in hand, Regina makes her way to Marco's house.


End file.
